What is True Love?

What is True Love?

In his bestselling novel, The Emperor of Ocean Park, American constitutional law professor and accomplished novelist, Stephen L. Carter, puts these compelling words regarding true love on the lips of the protagonist, “True love is not the helpless desire to possess the cherished object of one’s fervent affection; true love is the disciplined generosity we require of ourselves for the sake of another when we would rather be selfish.”  Carter’s eloquent words simply communicate the message that true love does not take hostages.  It does not ask another person to sacrifice the essence of his or her character in order to accommodate our insecurities and incapacities.  True love does not imprison anyone to the self-centered fears and self-seeking demands of another person.  It encourages and empowers the recipient of affection to actualize his or her divine potential and natural ability.  Faithful, selfless, and daily willingness to share time, talent, treasure and temperament with the person we love is the practical means of fervent affection.  Simply put, to love genuinely is to empower liberally and relentlessly without need to incarcerate emotionally and relationally.

Envision a hostage crisis; presumably, you have seen many of these scenarios in television drama series and movies.  A perpetrator forcefully detains people against their will.  Inevitably, the assailant insists he is capturing a woman because he wholeheartedly loves her; he cannot bear the possibility of losing her.  His heart will not allow her to share her love with other people.  As the primary object of his love, she undoubtedly and unequivocally must restrict and direct her emotions and feelings solely towards him.  Any reasonable person refuses to characterize the captor’s actions and thoughts as love.  Instead of enhancing someone’s life, the captor creates fear and chaos whereby the cherished recipient of his “love” lives in constant danger.  Symbiotic relationships, in which one partner must account meticulously for his or her every thought or action, resemble the foregoing hostage situation.  Limiting a person’s contact with family and close friends is indicative of a hostage relationship.  In order to love someone, a partner should not require that he or she relinquishes important activities or dealings with other people.  A lifelong basketball coach shares the regrettable ultimatum he received from a former girlfriend who demanded he choose between her and his passion for the game and preparing youth to excel within it.  Had he lacked the internal fortitude and self-acceptance to rebuff such an unwarranted requirement, he would have been taken hostage in an unhealthy relationship in which he would have surrendered increasingly to additional irrational requests.

Carter posits true love forsakes selfishness as a person maintains “disciplined generosity” towards the people whom he loves.  When two people fall in love and decide to enter the covenant of holy matrimony; heart pounding exhilaration and limitless romantic feelings predominate.  Lest anyone rain upon their emotional and sensual parade, no one says anything about the monotony and even drudgery of daily marital and familial administration: laundry, grocery shopping, paying bills on time, maintaining a good credit rating, filing federal and state income taxes, differences in disciplining children, chauffeuring adolescents to extracurricular and athletic events, cleaning the house, picking up dry cleaning, automobile maintenance and any other numerous tasks necessary to a healthy, productive and loving family and household.  Although lengthy and multifaceted, this list is hardly exhaustive.  Nonetheless, these daily chores cumulatively comprise “disciplined generosity” whereby a person freely and lovingly devotes time, energy and finances to enrich the lives of people nearest and dearest to his or her heart.

Willingness fuels “disciplined generosity” as it giver requires selfless sacrifices of himself or herself as an outward display of genuine love toward the object of his or her fervent affection.  “Where there is love, there is no burden.”  Recall the early days of new, fresh and untainted love.  You purchase roses, candy, cards and other gifts for your beloved without any regard of cost of time or money.  Your reward is the satisfying and encouraging smile that will be on his or her face.  You cannot wait to see it.  Before giving a normal, polite greeting, your enthusiasm burst with the words, “I got a gift for you.  Hope you like it.”  If he or she asks a favor of you, you willingly and immediately say “Yes” as you do not wish to disappoint him or her.  You seek to spare any inconvenience or hardship of the person whom you love.  In time, this neophyte fever of new love wanes as you inevitably must live within the gravitational pull of daily work and personal responsibilities.  The realities of good financial stewardship, demanding job responsibilities, extended family obligations and maintaining longstanding friendships necessitate balance in a new love relationship.  However, as a couple grows together, they should not forsake the selfless sacrifices of their early days.  Willingly, they develop “disciplined generosity” towards each other in the performance of routine tasks which enable each other to become the very best child of God of which he or she is able.

Carter utilizes a parade of very colorful, complex and intriguing characters to define “true love.”  From the novel’s main protagonist, a retired federal judge whose unfailing love for a deceased daughter and victim of a drunk driver leads to moral and ethically questionable acts of vengeance, to the narrator whose unrepentant naiveté in the face of his wife’s adulterous activity corrodes the reader’s sympathy, Carter challenges his readers to determine whether they give and receive genuine love.